A grand jury indicted more than 200 of the J20 arrestees on felony rioting counts, and a superseding indictment in April 2017 stacked charges — inciting riot, conspiracy to riot, and multiple property-destruction felonies — until most defendants faced theoretical maximums above seventy years in prison. The government conceded it could not say who broke what; its theory was that wearing black, chanting, or simply marching constituted joining a conspiracy whose every act was chargeable to all. Prosecutors also sought sweeping digital dragnets, subpoenaing data on visitors to a protest website and the contents of organizers' social-media accounts.
The strategy was unprecedented in scale for an American protest case: not exemplary prosecution of a few, but an attempt to convict an entire demonstration. Defendants organized a collective-defense agreement — hundreds refusing individual plea deals that required testimony against others — betting that solidarity could beat a stacked indictment. Only one defendant, Dane Powell, took an early plea and served prison time; the rest held the line into trial.